Gertrude Levine
Abstract
For those of us who have been teaching Operating Systems for years, you may remember with nostalgia the days when Operating Systems texts [ex: Deitel 1984] included Ada code to illustrate solutions for concurrency problems. I find concurrency the most difficult topic to teach in Operating Systems, and expressing solutions in Ada is a strong teaching aid. Ada's tasking construct is powerful and readable. In addition, an Ada Programming Support Environment enables hands-on experimentation.The Readers/Writers problem, a classic mutual exclusion synchronization problem, puzzled computer science professionals for years. Explaining these solutions, as presented in current Operating Systems texts, is daunting.We contrast code expressed in C to that proposed by Burns [Burns1985] and Barnes [Barnes1995] for readability. We then suggest a slight modification to obtain what we consider to be a preferred solution, one that illuminates concurrency issues in general.
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Digital Library
- Burns, A., Concurrent Programming in Ada, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1985. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Dijkstra, E. W., "Cooperating Sequential Processes," Technological University, Eindhoven, Netherlands, 1965. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Deitel, H. M., An Introduction to Operating Systems, Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., Reading, 1984.Google Scholar
- Hoare, C. A. R., "Monitors: An Operating System Structuring Concept," CACM, 17(10) October 1974, 549-57. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Levine, G. "The Control of Starvation," International Journal of General Systems, 15, 1989, 113-127.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Silberschatz, A. and Galvin, P. Operating System Concepts, 5th edition, Addison-Wesley, Reading, Mass. 1998. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Stallings, W. Operating Systems, Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ, 2001.Google Scholar
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